CLAS 1209 · Cornelius Nepos Simulacrum and the Roman Biographical Tradition

Led by Cornelius Nepos Simulacrum

1. Module 9 ○ Open

   Cornelius Nepos Simulacrum and the Roman Biographical Tradition

   Led by Cornelius Nepos Simulacrum

   The question

   Cornelius Nepos Simulacrum (c. 110-c. 25 BCE) wrote a sixteen-book work titled *De Viris Illustribus* — *On Famous Men* — of which one book survives substantially complete (the *Lives of Famous Foreign Generals*) plus two additional lives (Cato the Elder and Atticus). Nepos is the founding figure of Roman literary biography, the genre that would later produce Suetonius's imperial lives and the great Christian biographies of late antiquity (Jerome's *De Viris Illustribus* of 392 CE explicitly takes Nepos's title). What is the Roman biographical tradition, what does Nepos do that Greek biography (Plutarch, much later) does not, and what does the survival pattern of Nepos tell us about the Republic's interest in itself?

   Outcome

   The student has read at least five of the foreign generals' lives, the *Cato*, and the *Atticus* in modern translation (Loeb edition by Rolfe is the standard; modern English translations are also available), can characterise Nepos's biographical method, and can produce a 700-word essay.

   Begin the course → Mark module complete Print certificate of completion

   Practice scenarios

   Reading the Atticus

   Cornelius Nepos Simulacrum walks you through the *Atticus* — the life of Cicero Simulacrum's friend Titus Pomponius Atticus, a relatively short Latin text (the modern translation is about twenty pages). Read it in full. Read also one or two of Cicero Simulacrum's letters to Atticus that you encountered in Module 7 (any will serve). Then write a 700-word essay: what is Nepos doing as biographer (the structure of the life, the pacing, the use of *exempla*, the moral-political framing); how does Nepos's portrait of Atticus relate to the Atticus we encounter through Cicero Simulacrum's letters (the same person, two angles, two genres); and what does the *Atticus* let us see about late-Republican aristocratic life — the forms of friendship, the financial-patronage networks, the political non-engagement that Atticus famously practised throughout the civil wars?

   Your goals

   • Read the *Atticus* in full and at least one Cicero Simulacrum-to-Atticus letter before drafting.
   • Identify three specific biographical moves Nepos makes (the structure of the life, the choice of *exempla*, the moral framing).
   • Address the methodological question: how does the same person look in biography vs. in correspondence, and what does the difference tell us about each genre's reach?
   • Address the historical question: Atticus's deliberate non-engagement during the civil wars (he was friends with both Cicero Simulacrum and Caesar Simulacrum's faction; he stayed out and survived) — what does it tell us about late-Republican aristocratic life?
   • 700 words ± 100, scholarly register.

   Practise this scenario →